Lanyards are a seriously underrated promotional item. Whether they’re customized for medals or as giveaways, custom lanyards can find their way into almost any event.
The most important thing to remember when designing a custom lanyard, is understanding what it is going to be used for. If the lanyards are for the medals, things like the place of the recipient, or the event date are usually included. If there’s fear of a design drawing away from the medal, a custom color to mimic the event theme may be used instead. This is a more subtle way of accenting the medal, instead of the lanyard being the focus.
If the lanyard is being used as a giveaway, it is usually a solid color with a logo printed on it. Whether it is a company who is sponsoring or tabling at an event, or the event logo itself, either one will work. At trade shows and conferences, it is common for companies to give out lanyards that have their logo on them so guests can use them to hold their entrance badges. Other guests will see they got a nice lanyard instead of a cheap shoestring to hold their passes, and make their way over to that particular booth. This draws in more people to share their product with.
Lanyards are also great at holding pins. Take a look at Disney for example. Disney has a pin trading community, and what easier way to carry your collection than around your neck? If you’re planning a group trip to Disney for a special occasion, get some custom lanyards for everyone! Say the trip is to celebrate a wedding, put the wedding dates and the bride and groom on the lanyards and start everyone off with a few pins. A lanyard for this type of event works in two ways. It gives you something to use to help during the trip, as well as something to remember the trip by after it is over.
If none of those reasons were good enough to apply to your event, I’ve got one more for you. If your event is annual and you change the theme, make lanyards to give out to the attendees for participating. Lots of people collect lanyards for events they love. For example, there are plenty of pokemon tournaments for the card game and the video game. At the world tournament each year, competitors received a special lanyard that has the location, year, and theme artwork on it. These became so widely sought after that the Pokemon Company International decided to start putting the lanyards in the store at the tournament. The store has all the exclusive World’s merchandise and after the tournament in 2014, they started putting a limit on the number of each item you could buy because of how fast things were selling out. The lanyards have sold out on the first day almost every year even with the quantity limits in place.
Lanyards have a place in every event, and in every home. From the school kid who uses it to hold their ID, to someone who goes to a lot of conferences, lanyards are used in almost all age groups. So why not go custom?